This is an English translation of our Japanese article. The Japanese version and the Cabinet Secretariat's own materials are authoritative. The measures described take effect only if the bill passes the Diet, and no amounts have been fixed yet. For decisions about your own case, consult your municipality or a licensed tax accountant.
Last updated: 17 September 2026. Based on Part 3 ("Payment of the Worker Burden Relief Support Payment") and Part 4 of the outline approved by Cabinet on 15 September 2026 — the "Outline on the temporary reduction of the consumption tax rate on food and beverages and the introduction of the Worker Burden Relief Support Payment" (Cabinet Secretariat). The content reflects the position if the bill is passed by the Diet — deliberations in the extraordinary session have not yet begun.
Japan's long-discussed refundable tax credit now has an official name — the Worker Burden Relief Support Payment — and it starts in April 2027. The part that is easy to miss is how you actually receive it. This is not a benefit that lands in your account automatically. The default rule is that you claim it from your municipality and receive a determination. The exception is that only people who have registered a public benefit receipt account can be certified by the mayor on the authority's own initiative. The outline goes as far as stating that "in the operation of payment administration, processing by own-initiative certification shall be the rule." Checking whether your account is registered is more useful right now than waiting for the amounts to be announced.
Does the payment simply arrive?
The outline's section on certification and payment states the default rule first.
A person eligible for the payment who seeks to receive it must obtain certification of that eligibility from the mayor of the municipality (including special ward) of their address as at the assessment date, based on their claim.
So the default is a claim-based system. You file with the city, town or ward where you live, and payment follows certification. It is unlike the pension or child allowance, where one application carries forward, and unlike the 2024 fixed-amount tax cut, which employers processed inside payroll.
An exception follows immediately.
For a registered holder of a public benefit receipt account whose eligibility and payment amount are clear, the mayor may certify on the authority's own initiative, notwithstanding the claim requirement. For this reason, in the operation of payment administration, processing by own-initiative certification shall be the rule.
A "public benefit receipt account" is the bank account you register with the national government (the Digital Agency) alongside your My Number. Once registered, money can be transferred without you writing account details on a form or attaching a copy of a passbook. Because the outline makes own-initiative certification the operating rule, there are two practical routes.
AYou have registered a public benefit receipt account
The municipality certifies on its own initiative and the money is transferred with no claim and no application form. You do not write account details or attach a copy of a passbook. Since the outline makes this the operating rule, registered people are the least likely to miss out.
BYou have not registered
The default applies: you claim it from your municipality and obtain certification. The outline says deadlines will be set for claims, own-initiative certifications and determinations "taking into account the administrative burden on municipalities", but those deadlines have not been published, and what happens if you miss one is also undecided. Registering is the safer course.
A registered account can still be too old to qualify for own-initiative certification. The condition is a registered account holder "whose eligibility and payment amount are clear". If a closed account is still on file the transfer bounces, which is why the outline lists implementing account-existence verification and keeping the register accurate and current among the national government's tasks. If you have changed jobs, moved or closed an account, it is worth checking that the registered account is the one you use now.
When, how often, and how much
Timing and frequency are settled in the outline. Only the amounts await a Cabinet Order.
is introduced
(twice in FY2029 only)
certification or determination
The payment is made on a fiscal-year basis, and the year's amount is paid within two months of the day the mayor certifies eligibility or determines the amount. It is paid once a year, in units of 1,000 yen with fractions rounded up.
| Fiscal year | Payments | Age of dependent children | Spouse income test |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2027 | Once | Under 16 | None |
| FY2028 | Once | Under 16 | None |
| FY2029 | Twice | Under 19 | Yes (spouse income cap) |
| FY2030 onward | Once | Under 19 | Yes |
FY2029 has two payments because the 1% food consumption tax rate ends in March 2029 and the step has to be smoothed. In April 2029 people who were eligible in FY2028 receive an advance of roughly half a year's worth, and those eligible in FY2029 then receive the remaining half-year equivalent. The benefit around the return to 8% is tracked in the article on the 2029 reversion.
Not a single amount has been fixed. The flat support amount, the base support amount, the child add-on and every threshold — income floor, phase-in start and end, phase-out start, income cap, net burden standard and spouse income cap — are all at the stage of "to be examined and set together with securing permanent funding". Figures circulating in the press, such as 40,000 yen per person, are estimates or proposals; the outline contains no numbers. What it does set is a ceiling for the first two years: the total cost of the payments in FY2027 and FY2028 must fall within the equivalent of the 1% food consumption tax. In other words, it is distributed inside the revenue forgone by cutting the food consumption tax to 1%. Income-by-income estimates are maintained in our refundable tax credit simulation.
The outline also commits the national government to building a website where eligible people can calculate their own payment and to operating a national call centre. Once the amounts are set, an official estimator should be available.
Who qualifies
The target group is "working-age people on low and middle incomes", assessed per individual rather than per household. The outline sets out four requirements.
- Employment income must exceed the income floor. Employment income here means the amount computed from the previous year's salary income plus business income and miscellaneous business income above a set level. Having earned income above a threshold is the gateway.
- The previous year's total income must be at or below the income cap. The cap is set according to whether you have dependent children and how many.
- Net burden must exceed the net burden standard. This is measured by taking the amount computed from that year's resident tax plus the previous year's social insurance premium deduction for premiums you yourself bear, less public pension income received during the previous year. The outline notes this brings in "low and middle income older people who work and whose net burden is at working-age levels".
- If you have a spouse, the spouse's previous-year total income must be at or below the spouse income cap. This test applies only from FY2029 — spouse income is not examined in FY2027 or FY2028.
In addition, no payment is made to anyone without an address in Japan on the assessment date of 1 January.
The outline's footnotes give reference figures for the thresholds. These are inputs to the decision, not final values.
・The coverage line for short-time workers under employees' insurance, referenced for the income floor — the lowest regional minimum wage in FY2025 (1,023 yen an hour) times 20 hours a week annualises to 1.06 million yen of salary income (320,000 yen of income), with social insurance premiums of roughly 160,000 yen
・The resident tax income-levy exemption limit, referenced for the phase-in start — 450,000 yen of income (1.19 million yen of salary) for a single person
・Where a Category 3 national pension insured person reaches 1.3 million yen and becomes Category 1, take-home pay after tax and premiums recovers at around 1.6 million yen a year
People facing the so-called income wall receive an employment promotion special add-on as a time-limited measure until the wall is resolved. The walls themselves are explained in our guide to the 1.06 and 1.3 million yen thresholds.
The assessment date of 1 January changes more than you expect
- The office in charge is the municipality where you lived on 1 January. If you move mid-year, that year's payment is still handled by the municipality where you were registered on 1 January — the same logic as resident tax.
- No address in Japan on 1 January means no payment. If you moved abroad at the end of the year and returned in the new year, you fall outside that fiscal year.
- Whether you had a spouse is also judged as at 1 January (from FY2029). Register a marriage on 2 January and you are treated as having no spouse for that fiscal year.
The certification, payment and disbursement work handled by municipalities is designated a statutory entrusted function. It is not the kind of scheme where a local authority can add or waive conditions, so amounts and requirements do not vary by where you live. Speed of payment and quality of guidance may still differ. The national government plans to provide municipalities with a free payment-calculation tool and to contract for benefit support services centrally.
No claim needed from the second year
This is not a scheme that makes you start over every year. The outline provides that where a person certified in an earlier fiscal year still meets the requirements in the current year, the mayor determines that year's amount. Once certified, the amount is set automatically in later years.
The flip side is that certification is revoked for a year in which you fall outside the requirements. A pay rise or side income that pushes total income above the cap, or cutting your hours so that employment income drops below the floor, stops that year's payment. Because the amount phases in at the bottom and phases out at the top, people near a threshold can be paid in some years and not in others.
A scheme built to make take-home pay feel bigger still asks you to register an account to receive it, and the amount moves with your income every year. Designing relief around international comparisons of net burden rates is coherent enough, but complexity always leaves some people uncollected. The call centre and estimator written into the outline are an acknowledgement of that. On the reader's side, the controllables reduce to two: register the account, and make sure your income is on record.
The payment is tax-free — but counts as income for public assistance
| Item | Treatment |
|---|---|
| Income tax and resident tax | Not levied. The outline provides that "no tax or other public imposition may be levied on the payment" |
| Attachment | Not permitted. Nor may the right be transferred or pledged — except attachment through delinquency proceedings for national tax |
| Other social security schemes | Through the tax-free treatment, the payment is designed not to affect the eligibility requirements of existing schemes |
| Public assistance | Counted as income. What you receive is reflected in the calculation of assistance |
Being tax-free matters in practice. Because the payment never enters taxable income, receiving it cannot push you into resident tax liability, change a dependency test, or alter how premiums are calculated. The classic side effect — a taxable benefit tipping you across some other scheme's threshold — is closed off from the start. The resident tax exemption test itself is set out in our guide to resident-tax-exempt households.
File a return even if you owe no resident tax
Part 4 of the outline contains a practical line for readers. Among the national government's publicity tasks it states, in so many words, that this will include "encouraging even non-taxpayers to actively file tax returns".
The reason lies in how the requirements are built. Eligibility is judged from income information the administration already holds — resident tax, the social insurance premium deduction, the number of dependent children, the spouse's income. If income is not on record, the payment amount is never "clear", and the premise for own-initiative certification collapses. Someone with no filing obligation who has never filed is unlikely to be on the map at all.
In step with this, the forms of the tax return, the withholding statement, the resident tax return and the salary payment report will be amended so that municipalities can capture what FY2029 onward requires. Three new items:
- The social insurance premium deduction for premiums you yourself bear (used to compute net burden)
- Whether you have dependent children, and how many (used for the child add-on and the income cap)
- The spouse's name and individual number — only where you had a spouse on the assessment date whose previous-year total income exceeds the spouse income cap. Those affected must submit this to the local authority, and entering it on the tax return counts as having submitted it (the information then reaches the municipality via eLTAX, the online system for local taxes)
A change in the forms means these three items will appear in filing practice from 2027. The third is an unusual shape — only people with a high-earning spouse submit the spouse's individual number — so it is worth reviewing once the forms are published.
What to do today
- Check on Mynaportal whether a public benefit receipt account is registered. If not, register one. That single fact decides whether you need to apply at all.
- If it is registered, confirm the account is one you still use. A closed account left on file can bounce the transfer and take you outside the premise for own-initiative certification.
- File a tax return even without an obligation to. The outline urges non-taxpayers to file precisely because unrecorded income keeps you off the assessment base.
Concrete ways to raise your take-home pay are collected in our take-home pay action list.
Frequently asked questions
Will it be paid without an application?
If you have registered a public benefit receipt account, the mayor may certify eligibility on the authority's own initiative, and the outline makes own-initiative processing the rule in payment administration. In that case no claim and no application form are needed. If you have not registered, the default applies and you must claim it from your municipality to obtain certification.
How much will I receive?
The amounts are not yet decided. The flat support amount, base support amount, child add-on and thresholds such as the income floor and income cap are all at the stage of being examined and set together with securing permanent funding. For FY2027 and FY2028 the only constraint published is that the total cost of the payments must fall within the equivalent of the 1% food consumption tax.
Do I have to claim it every year?
No. Where a person certified in an earlier fiscal year still meets the requirements in the current year, the mayor determines that year's amount. Certification is revoked, however, for a year in which the requirements are not met. People whose income sits near a threshold may be paid in some years and not in others.
Is the payment taxed? Does it affect dependency status or premiums?
No tax or other public imposition may be levied on the payment, so neither income tax nor resident tax applies. Through this tax-free treatment the scheme is designed not to affect the eligibility requirements of existing social security schemes. It is, however, counted as income under the public assistance system.
If I moved at the end of the year, which municipality do I claim from?
The city, town or ward where your residence record was held on 1 January, the assessment date. Moving mid-year does not change which office handles that fiscal year. And because no payment is made to anyone without an address in Japan on the assessment date, a year in which you had moved abroad at year-end falls outside the scheme.
Does it increase with children? Are high school age children covered?
A flat child add-on is paid according to whether you have dependent children and how many. The definition differs by year, though: dependent relatives under 19 from FY2029 onward, but under 16 in FY2027 and FY2028. During the two bridging years a household whose only dependents are of high school age receives no child add-on, and comes into scope from FY2029.
Sources
- Cabinet Secretariat — on the food consumption tax reduction and the refundable tax credit (the primary page collecting the outline, basic policy, interim report and administrative notices; Japanese)
- Outline on the temporary reduction of the consumption tax rate on food and beverages and the introduction of the Worker Burden Relief Support Payment (Cabinet decision, 15 September 2026 — the source for the requirements, certification, payment and tax-free treatment described here; Japanese)
- Cabinet Secretariat, National Council on Social Security — summary of the draft outline (8 September 2026, with the diagram of how the payment is built up; Japanese)
- Digital Agency, Mynaportal — how to register or change a public benefit receipt account
- Mynaportal — public benefit receipt account
This article is general information based on materials published as at 17 September 2026. What it describes applies only if the bill passes the Diet and may change during deliberations. All amounts and thresholds remain undecided. For a decision about your own eligibility, consult your municipality, a tax office or a licensed tax accountant.
